President Facing Difficult Choice: To Be Branded As Incompetent Or As Liar

COMMENTARY

December 2, 1986|By WILLIAM RASPBERRY, Washington Post Writers Group

It is possible, but not really conceivable, that:

--The official version of the Iranian arms deal we heard yesterday is the whole truth.

--Attorney General Edwin Meese`s weekend investigation was designed to give president Reagan the details of what in fact happened, not merely the basis for a cover story to get the president off the hook.

--Adm. John Poindexter, Reagan`s national security adviser and apparently one of the brains behind the deal to trade arms for hostages, was the highest- ranking official to know that profits from the deal would go to aid the contras.

--Those in and out of the media who had been urging the president to roll some heads (Poindexter and Don Regan were the most frequent nominees) in order to save the credibility of his administration will now be satisfied.

The Meese investigation, Reagan`s supposed shock over its disclosures and the purging of Poindexter and his deputy, Lt. Col. Oliver North, are reminiscent of nothing so much as the Watergate scandal, which saw President Nixon ordering a John Dean investigation and (``shocked`` at its disclosures) firing Dean, John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman.

And the reaction of the press is likely to be similar as well.

It isn`t that the columnists, editorialists and other free-lance advisers were trying to trick the president when they urged him to admit error and fire the people who had given him such dreadful advice. They probably thought they meant it. They meant it, too, when they urged Nixon to make a clean breast of things in order to save his presidency.

But now that Reagan has followed their advice, he`d better be prepared, like Nixon, for a siege of ``what did the president know and when did he know it?`` investigations.

The Teflon President has finally found himself in a situation from which he cannot easily get unstuck. If he owns up to specific knowledge of the details of the deal, he will expose himself as an out-of-control president who defied congressional mandates (quite possibly in willful violation of the law) and then lied about it, repeatedly.

And if he doesn`t own up, who, even among his supporters, will believe him?

Is it possible to believe that Poindexter and North, both successful military men who understand the chain of command, undertook to cut a hostages- for-arms-for-cash deal with the Iranians (while the president was pressing America`s allies not to deal with them), involved a third country, Israel, in the arrangement and then siphoned off the profits for the benefit of Reagan`s beloved contras, all without letting the boss know what was going on? Is it possible to believe that these two men, who if they know anything at all know the the value of covering their anatomies, were reckless enough to concoct a scheme involving millions of unaccounted-for dollars on their own?

It may be true, but it doesn`t sound like the truth.

And so there will be demands, probably successful, for independent investigations; there will be a swarm of investigative journalists, all hell- bent on finding out what really went on, and with whose knowledge. And it is a virtual certainty that there will be new, embarrassing disclosures.

Friends and enemies will join in urging the president once again to come clean, to own up, to admit both his errors and his arrogance and save his presidency.

And none of it will undo the damage -- not just to the president and his party but to vital American interests abroad. It`s hard to see a way out. For him to insist that the incredible is true will paint him as a probable liar. To confess to a series of lies will remove all doubt.

President Reagan is now branded, perhaps for the balance of his presidency, as either an out-of-touch incompetent or an out-of-control liar.

It will be awfully interesting to see how the Great Communicator extricates himself from this self-imposed and exceedingly dangerous mess.